Open Source / GPL

"This article represents the general aspect of the internet services provided in 3rd world countries like Nepal and also gives general information of Nepal. It highlights how international internet bandwidth gets relayed via satellites to third world countries and how open source softwares like Linux/Unix, FreeRadius, Apache, Squid, Bind, HTB, etc, are playing a big part in bringing the internet content to the rest of the population. The high price of international bandwidth using Satellites and it's negative performance due to high altitudes are also reviewed and how a third world country like Nepal is trying to improve them. It also looks at how the Internet and the World Wide Web can play a very useful role in shaping the future of these third world countries."

More and more open-source developers these days are employees of companies, paid to work on open-source projects, rather than independent programmers doing it for fun. The change raises issues for projects, programmers and employers alike.

The Dutch government has set a soft deadline of April 2008 for its agencies to start using open-source software — programs that anyone can modify and that work with a variety of technology — the Netherlands Economic Affairs Ministry said Thursday.

Yesterday, the Tweede Kamer (Second Chamber) of the Dutch parliament adopted a plan to switch the country's public sector over to open standards. At the same time, authorities will be called upon to use open source software wherever possible. The 26-page paper from the Dutch Economics Ministry obligates governmental services to provide reasons why they need to continue to use proprietary solutions, such as operating systems or office suites from Microsoft, starting next April; next December, this duty will be imposed upon all public authorities. At the same time, authorities are required to come up with a strategy that includes a timeline for migration to open standards and free software.

Alex Brown has now written up a FAQ on the ballot resolution meeting scheduled for February over MSOOXML, "Frequently Asked Questions regarding DIS-29500 Ballot Resolution Meeting", over which he will preside. The FAQ informs us that National Bodies need to send in their list of delegates by December 11, or they likely won't be let in to the February meeting. That is today, folks. Here's what will and won't be discussed:

Continuent today announced new versions of Continuent uni/cluster for PostgreSQL and Continuent uni/cluster for MySQL with enhanced database scaling and ease of deployment in large-scale production environments. Continuent uni/cluster is a suite of middleware software that delivers high-availability and scalability clustering for virtually any mission critical database application.